



'I 




v 



The Conditions of Peace Between 
the East and the West* 



BY J. H. DEFOREST, D. D. 

Missionary of the American Board in Japan. 



Address at the Annual Dinner of the American, Peace Society, 
May 1'2, 1908. 

It is easy enough for the average mind to say that, 
since public opinion against war is increasing from age to 
age, since peace societies, humanitarian sentiments, arbi- 
tration and the Hague tribunal are well to the front, that 
these and similar conditions that make for peace may be 
relied upon to carry us successfully through this new 
experiment of vast dimensions — the coming together of 
the East and th#e$i£est -without the curse of great wars. 

Very well, T '^t us give thanks for all the growing 
conditions t*^"^ "''or peace and friendship among all 

nations, Bt«(^ ^ umbly bear in mind two facts : 

(1) All these^%, ^med are not yet powerful 

enough to insure evt called Christian West from 

the danger of war among o elves, Europe is armed to 
the teeth and the voice of p ce is yet powerless to win 
disarmament, (2) If in a great civilization like ours, 
based on a common history, a common religion, a common 
body of laws and customs, we are still armed for possible 
conflicts among ourselves, what can we expect when two 
great civilizations, hitherto comparatively ignorant of 
each other, come in mutual contact — civilizations with 
wholly different languages, laws, governments; with 
religions whose differing sacred traditions are a potent 
cause of misunderstandings ; and the whole problem yet 
more complicated by race prejudice and by vast economic 
disturbances ? 



DSs\? 
. 114- 



We have a great unfinished problem in our own west- 
ern hemisphere as to how we can secure a century of 
peace at home ; and now to this is added another, every 
way more complex and difficult: how to bring the two 
halves of the human race into relations of permanent 
peace based on permanent friendship. It is this last prob- 
lem I will try to discuss, though briefly and imperfectly, 
limiting myself to certain phases of the political and re- 
ligious conditions under which the West meets the East. 

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 

In the political meeting of the East and the West there 
are many things that rasp the feelings of the people out 
there, and these we ought to study with great care. 
Politically we meet them as superiors, relegating them 
to the place of inferiors. This we call in international 
law exterritoriality. I do not think the ordinary man or 
woman of the West has any idea of the ceaseless friction 
and discord and hatred that this system of exterritoriality 
enforced on the East breeds in the minds of the people 
out there. You cannot take up a daily paper in the 
Eastern ports, or enter into a piazza talk at the hotels, or 
watch the conduct of men in the foreign settlements, 
without running up against some form of exterritoriality 
that is offensive and hateful to the people of the land. 

THE GOOD OF EXTERRITORIALITY. 

Of course, I know that the system of exterritoriality 
has its good side; that it is the only way our ablest and 
best jurists have discovered by which commerce and 
international intercourse are possible on peaceful lines 
with the East. In the case of Japan it was the spur 
that hastened her adoption of Western codes of laws, and 
enabled her to enter among world powers as a political 
equal many decades sooner than might otherwise have 
been possible. And under this system those splendid 
emporiums of Yokohama, Kobe, Shanghai and others 
have risen from nothing to be counted among the most 
prosperous centres of world commerce, and, better yet, 
centres for the distribution of world knowledge. 



THE BAD OF EXTERRITOEIALITY. 

But all the same, exterritoriality at its best is an in- 
fringement of territorial sovereignty, and that is what no 
independent nation will permit, unless gunboats force it. 
Its very definition carries a sting in it, for, as Woolsey 
says, it is "to protect the citizens of civilized nations 
against the unsuitable laws of more barbarous countries." 

There it is ! We are civilized, they are semi-barbarous ! 
One illustration will show how it works. Yokohama, 
fifty years ago, was a small plot of ground ceded to the 
foreign powers, whereon their nationals were permitted 
to live and do business. It grew rapidly to be a com- 
mercial city of world significance. But the foreigners 
there were cooped up within a few acres, and could not 
spend a night, or do business, outside of these narrow 
limits. On the other hand, Japan had no authority 
within the foreign settlement. If a foreigner struck, 
robbed or killed a native, the Japanese could not arrest 
and try and punish him, but each of the sixteen foreign 
consuls had his own court for his own nationals. And 
there were always foreign warships in Japanese waters 
as delicate reminders of our purpose to maintain our ex- 
territorial privileges. 

A NATIONAL HUMILIATION. 

You can easily see how all this must have exasperated 
a great and sensitive people with a history and traditions 
and literature and art and religions. One of my first dis- 
coveries thirty years ago was that the Japanese felt hu- 
miliated over their loss of territorial sovereignty, and would 
do everything possible to regain complete authority over 
everybody within their empire. " We must hasten the 
abolition of exterritoriality," was the burden of a stirring 
address that I heard soon after going to Japan, by a 
principal of a high school to his graduating pupils. And 
four years ago, when Professor JST. Hozumi, of the Im- 
perial University of Tokyo, spoke at the St. Louis Expo- 
sition about Japanese law, he frankly acknowledged the 
good side of exterritoriality, saying that it had made his 
government hasten the revision and codification of their 



civil, criminal and commercial codes. Yet you can see 
how humiliating this system was, from the Professor's 
added confession : " At the same time, we felt that the 
existence of such a legal anomaly was a disgrace to our 
country and wholly incompatible with that scrupulous 
regard for the integrity of territorial sovereignty which 
ought to characterize the intercourse of independent 
nations. So attempts were repeatedly made to revise 
the treaties and expunge from them the abominable 
exterritorial clause." 

ABOLISHED IK JAPAK. 

Fortunately Japan's new codes of laws, which cost her 
fifteen years of serious work, satisfied Western powers, 
and in 1899 what a wave of joy went over the empire 
when the revised treaties recognized Japan's judicial and 
tariff autonomy and her full political equality! Ever 
since the feelings of Japan toward the West have been 
as equals with equals. There are no longer any conces- 
sions in which foreigners are cooped up, and where they 
have their consular courts. The Japanese alone have 
authority, and their police and courts are everywhere. 
The whole empire is open for foreigners to travel or do 
business as they like, only always under Japanese law 
and protection. That is, there is no difference between 
Japanese and foreigners, so far as travel and business and 
residence are concerned. 

Now this political equality with Japan is one of the 
greatest of steps in the prevention of war. It is a great 
thing that Japan had such splendid self-control under 
repeated provocations as to endure forty-five years of 
exterritorial disgrace without an appeal to arms. Japan 
is the only nation that has done that, and I am glad to 
say that, during these hard years of trial, the govern- 
ment and people of the United States, of all the sixteen 
treaty powers, were the most sympathetic and helpful 
towards Japan's political ambition. It is because our 
legation stood for Japan's rights when representatives of 
other powers were inclined to ignore them ; it is because 
our nation was the only one that returned an indemnity 
wrung from her in an hour of weakness ; it is because 



our minister was the only one, when the joyous day of 
Japan's release from exterritoriality came, to issue a 
proclamation congratulating Japan and exhorting all 
Americans to obey all laws and do everything possible 
to cement cordial relations with the people, — it is for this 
political sympathy that Japan loves America as she does 
no other nation, and is one of our warmest friends. And, 
I may add here, that for us to regard lightly this sincere 
friendship, or to permit a section of our press and poli- 
ticians to weaken it by their shameful insinuations and 
wicked misrepresentations, is the greatest political mis- 
take we can make towards the East. Let us as a gov- 
ernment and as a people stand true to this historic 
friendship with Japan. 

EXTBKRITORIALITY IN CHINA. 

If exterritoriality was a real peril to peaceful relations 
with Japan, it is much more a source of hatred and even 
of wars with China. For China, with its enormous popu- 
lation and extent of territory, wakes up more slowly than 
did compact Japan to the necessity of adopting codes of 
law that fit world intercourse. Moreover, China has not 
been nearly as skillful in handling exterritorial problems 
as Japan was, and unscrupulous foreigners have taken ad- 
vantage of her ignorance and political weakness to exploit 
her mercilessly. So that now we see, what Japan never 
would have allowed, China's customs under foreign con- 
trol, and railroads under foreign construction and owner- 
ship, and foreign steamships running hundreds of miles 
into her most populous and wealthy regions, while for- 
eign gunboats follow. 

What I saw in Shanghai a year ago may throw a little 
light on this subject. Aggressive Westerners have made 
a wonderful city there, where but a few decades ago were 
nothing but paddy fields. They have built wide solid 
roads running out in the country in every direction, and 
they were laying trolley tracks in the most substantial 
manner, so that Chinese mobs could not tear them up. 
I learned that the Chinese authorities were opposed to 
the building of these lines outside of the concession, yet 



the foreigners were pushing on regardless of the govern- 
ment's refusal to grant them permission. I saw those 
tall fierce-looking turbaned sikhs from India used as 
police in the city, and I heard that they were hated and 
feared by the Chinese. I also found that some lawless 
Americans had been running the worst kind of gambling 
hells, opium dens, and prostitution houses, which our 
shiftless consular court had not prevented. And but 
shortly before that there had been such a miscarriage of 
justice in the arrest and detainment of a Chinese woman 
by the foreign police that a threatening Chinese mob 
necessitated the foreigners living under arms for a while, 
and the assembling of the gunboats of Western powers. 
In addition to these irritating facts is the ever-present 
opium question, the solution of which, fortunately, we 
may hope is in sight. 

Now I do not say that, under existing circumstances, 
all these things are necessarily wicked and unjust, but 
this much is plain to the man on the street, that no self- 
respecting government, with power to make others re- 
spect it, would stand these things ; no, not for an hour. 



SOME EVIL RESULTS OF EXTERRITOEIALITY. 

If the evils of this system were felt only in the very 
small concessions, it still would be humiliating to any 
government to have to endure them. But they are felt 
all through the empire. China, as everybody knows, 
has been exploited by foreigners in various ways : by 
getting concessions for railroads, by forcing unwelcome 
commerce, and even by seizing territory, until now there 
is a bitter anti-foreign sentiment growing through the 
eighteen provinces and among the 400,000,000 of China.. 
That disastrous Boxer movement that imperilled all the 
legations; that cost the lives of so many missionaries 
and their converts ; that sent a destructive allied army 
to Peking which enriched itself by looting the palaces ; 
that forced from humiliated China another huge indem- 
nity ; that compelled her to erect, in honor of a murdered 
German official, a monument which must anger every 
Chinese who sees it; and the boycott of American 



goods, — these and their like are some of the recent 
results, direct and indirect, of this system of exterritori- 
ality. 

EXTERRITORIALITY A NINETEENTH CENTURY NECESSITY. 

Now I do not see how this offensive system can be 
wholly abolished, and foreigners be left under the laws 
of China, so long as those laws permit torture, and so 
long as bribes are believed to be a power in her courts. 
At the same time, it is notorious that we "civilized" 
Westerners have pushed exterritorial privileges far be- 
yond their original intent, until we have stirred up 
among those whom our international law terms " semi- 
civilized " wide and bitter hatred and even wars. And 
the question I want to raise is, Is not one century of this 
enough ? Is there not a better way of politically meet- 
ing the peoples of the East that would not be a perpetual 
humiliation ? And should not Western governments be 
as eager to limit the aggressions of their nationals in 
China as we are to repel any such aggressions upon our- 
selves? 

POLITICAL SYMPATHY WITH CHINA INCREASING. 

Now I believe that some of our Western powers are 
getting tired and ashamed of our nineteenth century 
treatment of China, and really want to do something that 
shall make a happier twentieth century for her and thus 
for the world. Some brief illustrations will show the 
beginning of a better political sympathy with her. We 
of the United States are improving the quality of our 
consular officers. President Cleveland, seeing the in- 
justice to Japan of sending incapable consular agents 
there, selected Mr. Mclvor for the office of Consul Gen- 
eral at Yokohama and said to him : " We have deprived 
the Japanese of their right to govern Americans living in 
Japan, and therefore it is our duty to Japan to place 
over our nationals there a man who is a trained lawyer, 
one who will maintain there the high traditions of our 
courts." 

I have just referred to the recent lawlessness of some 



Americans in Shanghai whom the Chinese government, 
of course, couldn't touch. Well, President Roosevelt 
sent Judge Wilfley there to drive out those authors of 
vice and crime, and he did. But they were so firmly in- 
trenched that they resisted, and actually attempted to 
impeach the Judge. And you have all read, with delight, 
in the recent papers, the fiery, indignant words of our 
President concerning these vicious Americans in Shang- 
hai : " Judge Wilfley was attacked solely because of the 
fearlessness and integrity with which he had stamped out 
vice and crime in Shanghai. If this attempt to impeach 
him were to succeed, the beneficiaries would be every 
keeper of a house of prostitution, every swindling law- 
yer, every man who lives by corruption and blackmail in 
the cities of the Far East." And he truly adds: "It is 
not too much to say that this assault on Judge Wilfley in 
the interests of vicious and criminal classes is a public 
scandal." 

Perhaps the greatest political sympathy ever shown 
to China was when our righteous Secretary Hay called a 
halt in any partition of China, and put a stop to under- 
handed plans of European powers by his policy of the 
open door throughout the East. 

Great Britain also is growing more honorable and 
sympathetic with China, as you all know, by her willing- 
ness at last to put an end to the opium trade. This is a 
great step towards international justice. And in this 
connection I may say that we of the United States may 
well praise our government for having forbidden our 
nationals to engage at all in the sale of opium. 

One more act of political kindness Great Britain has 
recently done which I wish the other powers would 
imitate. Some of our Western papers published in the 
open ports of the East have persistently taken an attitude 
of hostile criticism and even of defiance of the authorities 
of the land. They have in several instances done every- 
thing they could to stir up ill-will and hatred and strife 
between the East and the West. It is bad enough to 
have yellow journals at home, but it is far more insulting 
to permit them on exterritorial soil. So Great Britain 
has decreed that both the editor and proprietor of any 
English newspaper on exterritorial ground that publishes 



9 

anything calculated to stir up international hatred shall 
be severely punished. 

These illustrations show how our governments are 
waking up to the necessity of limiting some of the abuses 
that have sprung up. 

THE MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 

But I must hasten to state briefly how the missionary 
movement, which is now a great world movement, is 
complicated with this exterritorial problem. Having 
been a missionary for a third of a century in Japan, the 
most of which time 1 was under exterritoriality, I have 
been compelled to raise the question, How can the great 
body of some four thousand missionaries in the East help 
to lessen the friction of exterritoriality and possibly to 
hasten its entire abolition ? Perhaps a brief comparison 
of Japan with China may give some clues. 

The treaties with Japan have never contained the 
phrase " Merchants and missionaries," while those with 
China have it. This is a very significant point. Japan 
was quick to see the greater danger to her territorial 
integrity if one class of foreigners were permitted to go 
into the interior, while another class was confined to con- 
cessions in the open ports. She saw clearly that the 
privileges of exterritoriality must be strictly confined to 
the foreign concessions, where the consular courts were, 
and that no foreigners should be permitted to live even 
a rod outside of those narrow limits. Of course this 
didn't suit us missionaries, who were eager to go to 
Tokyo, Kyoto and other cities, and there build schools 
and hospitals and churches for the extension of Chris- 
tianity. But, all the same, we got there ; yet every one 
of us who went outside those five little concessions of a 
few acres had to go as an employee of a responsible 
Japanese, and the only occupation permitted us was that 
of teachers. Wherever we built our homes and schools 
and churches, it was always done in the name of a Japa- 
nese, who held all legal titles, in which no foreigner's 
name appeared. No foreigner could legally own a foot 
of soil, or even a brick or tile of his own house. Nor 
could he travel from place to place without a passport 



10 

furnished by the central government through his legation, 
which passport was given to merchants and missionaries 
alike for only two reasons, — for purposes of health or 
science. 

You can see at once that Japan, by this regulation, which 
we missionaries didn't like at all, virtually prevented one 
large class of difficulties — those arising from disputes 
over property. Yet flourishing Christian schools and 
hospitals and asylums and churches were built up with 
mission money in the interior, all, however, under the 
names of Japanese only. 



ONE REASON AVHY MISSIONARIES ARE MURDERED 
IN CHINA. 

But in China, in some shady way, and because France 
was the political protector of the Catholic priests, it hap- 
pened that the treaties recognize two classes of foreigners 
— merchants and missionaries. The merchants must 
stick to their narrow foreign concessions, and have no 
liberty of living or doing business in the interior, while 
missionaries can freely go pretty much everywhere, and 
can even buy land in their own name and build every- 
thing they want to. And the most astonishing thing of 
all is, that Catholic missionaries accepted a sort of official 
status, so that they ranked with prefects and even vice- 
roys, and wore the insignia of native officials, Protes- 
tant missionaries were wise enough to refuse this rank, 
but they carried with them all the privileges of exterri- 
toriality, and were exempt from Chinese authority. At 
times, like the Catholics, the Protestants have, on the 
grounds of humanity, interfered in lawsuits, and have 
come in for their share of political indemnities, none of 
which things we in Japan could do. 

Thus, in China, the doors of friction and misunder- 
standings and hatred and martyrdom were opened as- 
they never were in Japan. Of course, this is not be- 
cause the missionaries in Japan were wiser and better 
than those in China, On the contrary, we wanted to do 
just as they did. But the Japanese government was- 
vastly wiser than the Chinese, and by preventing u& 



11 

from getting the least political advantage, they unwit- 
tingly made all the better missionaries out of us, for 
which I, for one, am profoundly grateful. I believe it is 
because of this, in the main, that no missionary was ever 
assassinated in Japan ; that no native Christians were 
ever massacred ; and that no imperial edicts were ev^r 
issued warning the people not to hurt the missionaries. 
Japan is the only non-Christian nation in which modern 
missions have been truly successful without stirring up 
bloody strifes ; it is the only nation in which there is no 
martyr blood ; and of the growing naturalized church 
there it cannot be said, and probably never will be said, 
that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. 
But in China how different ! Our missionaries there 
have indeed done a wonderful work. No more magnifi- 
cent men and women, in character, in scholarship, in 
heroic action and noble suffering, can be found any- 
where on earth than among the thousands of the self- 
effacing missionaries in China! Yet, caught in the 
frictions of exterritoriality, and because they were easy 
to attack, they have been murdered by the dozen, and 
the infant church of Christ in China, both Catholic and 
Protestant, is built on the blood of martyrs, both foreign 
and native. 

EXTERRITORIALITY A MISFIT FOR THE TWENTIETH 
CENTURY. 

You, friends, have asked me for some of the condi- 
tions of peace between the East and the West. I have 
tried to show you that, although exterritoriality is in- 
tended to prevent strife and to be a real condition of 
peace, it is in teality a heavy strain on international re- 
lations. No nation has ever warded off its dangers so 
skilfully as Japan did, and by its abolition one vast irri- 
tant between her and the nations of the West has been 
removed. And I may add that it is also for the peace 
of the world that Japan has taken over Korea, and thus 
removed that weak and utterly incompetent people from 
the sphere and perils of exterritoriality. 

It cannot be emphasized too much that the real per- 
sistent peril to peace between the East and the West is 



12 

the nineteenth century system of exterritoriality. We 
are talking of universal arbitration, yet we forget that 
this exterritoriality exercised towards 400,000,000 of 
people — the greatest and oldest nation on earth — 
makes general arbitration impossible with them. So 
loqg as territorial sovereignty, the very heart of national 
honor, is infringed, how can China as a free agent gladly 
consent to a treaty of arbitration that can touch only 
those minor matters outside of our exterritorial rights ? 
Arbitration, to mean anything good and lasting, must be 
based on mutual respect between political equals. We 
have just concluded a treaty of arbitration with Japan 
as a political equal, but we can't do it with great China, 
where it is needed far more for the peace of the world. 

GOVERNMENTS MUST DISCOVER NEW METHODS. 

What then can be done ? Something surely is wrong 
when such a historic, civilized, moral nation as China is 
ready and willing to join in equal treaties of arbitration, 
yet is disqualified because of our exterritorial system im- 
posed by force upon her. If the love of peace is grow- 
ing ; if the spirit of international justice is on the in- 
crease ; if it is our duty to minimize the causes of 
international friction, — then it seems to me that it is up 
to our governments to find some method of intercourse 
with China that shall abolish the most of the evils that 
have grown up during the last century, and that shall be 
worthy of this, more moral twentieth century. And is 
it not possible that this splendid principle of arbitration 
may be extended and gradually substituted for this one- 
sided and hated exterritoriality? And in s«me such way 
of recognizing the political and territorial sovereignty of 
China, is it not possible to make an atmosphere in which 
the friendship of the East, instead of its hatred, may be 
rationally cultivated ? 

The spirit of justice that has led us to return in- 
flated indemnities ; that stamps out the lawlessness of 
Americans by sending out fearless judges and righteous 
consular officers ; that prepares for a better understand- 
ing of the East by raising up a body of competent 



13 

linguists to be responsible interpreters of Eastern prob- 
lems ; that has led Great Britain to try to abolish the 
opium trade, and to put an end to press agencies that 
stir up international ill-will, — this growing spirit of in- 
ternational justice we may confidently trust will find 
vastly better ways of meeting the great historic peoples 
of the East than was furnished by the too-shameful ex- 
territoriality of the nineteenth century. 

THE PEOPLE ALSO CAN HELP. 

Let UP, the people, change our attitude towards the 
East. We have too long looked down upon them as in- 
feriors, and even in our churches we have sweepingly 
characterized them as heathen and pagan. Our prayers, 
our preaching, our hymns, and our missionary literature 
have contained altogether too much of these terms which 
to the cultured peoples of the East are most highly of- 
fensive. I am astonished that a recent memorial, other- 
wise splendid in its spirit, signed by five secretaries of 
five great missionary societies, should have on nearly 
every page these slighting words, "the heathen world." 
I have heard again and again in the East sentiments of deep 
resentment at this insulting manner of sweepingly char- 
acterizing the people there. It does seem as though the 
churches of Christ, sending out their messengers of peace 
and goodwill through the great East, might at least be 
as polite and considerate as the agents of our govern- 
ments have to be in all their diplomatic utterances and 
correspondence. It is hard to estimate the damage to 
the cause of goodwill between the East and the West 
that is done by the careless and persistent use of these 
belated and offensive terms on the part of those whose 
deepest and sincerest purpose is to do good in the spirit 
of Christ. 

WHAT MISSIONARIES WILL DO. 

No one can fail to see that the missionary movement 
is now a recognized world movement, and it is impossible 
that a body of three thousand missionaries in China 
should not be a potent factor in uniting the East and the 



14 

West. We of Japan, living in the interior, came to see 
that Japan was worthy of political equality and could be 
trusted to do right towards us, and so we drew up 
memorials to our ministers, virtually saying that in our 
opinion the time had come to trust Japan ; and I believe 
our representations were of political value. 

Some such missionaries are also in China. One said 
to me last year : " I am perfectly willing to come under 
Chinese authority. I am sure they never would harm 
me." Already boards are most careful in selecting men 
for China, men who understand the Gospel of Christ as 
big enough to be sympathetic with all that is good in 
international and interdenominational relations. Already 
some boards have instructed their missionaries to have 
nothing whatever to do with native lawsuits, and the 
Chinese government, we are glad to say, has recently 
deprived Catholic priests of their political rights and 
privileges. Already Protestant missions have agreed to 
encourage the formation of one great Chinese church 
that shall be fitted to give Christian standards to the 
family and to society, instead of trying to plant the vari- 
ous Western denominations on Chinese soil, which would 
be nothing better than exterritorial Christianity. 

With this great body of missionaries becoming sympa- 
thetic with China's political ideals, with their noble pur- 
pose to make a Chinese Church, instead of teaching 
Western forms of our religion, with their growing schools 
and colleges teaching world knowledge and world move- 
ments, we may confidently expect they will more and 
more be heard in favor of some more righteous and 
friendly method of international intercourse that shall 
not be a perpetual humiliation to the government and 
people of China. 

MEECHANTS WILL GIVE VALUABLE AID. 

The great and powerful body of foreign merchants in 
the East contains some of the noblest men and women in 
the world. Yet we are forced to say that the influence 
of our merchants in the past century has been strong for 
the perpetuation of exterritoriality. In Japan they 



15 

resisted its abolition to the utmost, and we may expect 
that those merchants, by whose indomitable energy such 
cities as Shanghai were built, will do the same. Yet the 
spirit of universal justice is growing among the merchants 
of the world. It is a significant sign of the times that 
some Chambers of Commerce in the United States sent 
resolutions of enduring friendship to Japan, a sort of 
merchants' protest against the senseless jingo hostility to 
Japan. Commerce is one of the bonds that unite nations 
with golden cords, and in spite of local frictions, boycotts 
and even wars in the past, we are confident it will be a 
most valuable aid in deepening and enriching the friend- 
ship between the East and the West. 

THE WEST NEEDS THE SYMPATHY OF THE EAST. 

There is one very important point, in conclusion, that 
we in our overstrong sense of superiority are continually 
overlooking, and that is : we need the sympathetic co- 
operation of the East in the solution of the most difficult 
problem the world has ever seen. The complex and try- 
ing problem of this century — one laden with untold 
consequences of good or evil — is the coming together of 
the millions of the East with the millions of the West, 
two mighty civilizations with different languages, cus- 
toms, institutions, religions. Wherever the lines have 
hitherto met, there have been frictions, suspicions, strife, 
war. The burden of the peaceful solution of this im-^ 
mense world problem, so far as the West is concerned, 
falls on the Anglo-Saxon race. Great Britain saw per- 
fectly well that the West alone could never do it, and 
hence that splendid first alliance between the East and 
the West. 

We of this Republic cannot have such a political alli- 
ance, but we need the moral and sympathetic alliance 
with the nations of the East, without which arbitration 
treaties will be of little avail. To think that we of the 
West are going to solve this problem without the warm, 
sympathetic cooperation of the East as equals is a thought 
born from our traditional thinking of them as heathen, 
and their religions as false, and their future as hell, while 
we pride ourselves on being Christian, with the only true 




028 326 111 6 

16 

religion, and our destiny as heaven. To think that we 
can solve it by gunboats and repression is Hobsonian in 
the extreme. We can only solve it by the practice of 
that universal righteousness and justice which are as nec- 
essary among nations as between individuals, both sides 
being givers and both sides receivers. 

In this vast complex world- work every individual 
may contribute something, by right habits of thought, 
polite and considerate ways of speaking, and by doing to 
others as we would they should do to us. Thus we all can 
help bridge what is mistakenly called the impassable gulf 
between the peoples of the East and the West, both of 
which are, at bottom, God's children, and therefore of 
necessity brethren. 

AUBURNDALE, MaSS. 



American Peace Society, 

•313-314 Colorado Building,' 
washington. d. c. 




LIBRARY OF. CONGRESS f 



028 326 111 6 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH8.5 



